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Annual Report, of the Medical Officer of Health—1872—3. 13
sure bring any number of decrepid, imbecile, insane, scrofulous, and otherwise diseased
children into the world." How often are we called upon to witness the sad results of the
marriage of persons afflicted with the same mental and physical diseases, or tendencies
thereto. The intensifying of disease, the early death of one or both parents, and the residue
of a puny delicate offspring, are the sure and certain results from such ill-assorted marriages.
The intermarriage of near relations has produced the most fatal results upon
the progeny. It has proved one amongst other causes of the decline and fall of nations.
"The degeneracy of the old Spanish nobility, through the result of a proud and arrogant
exclusiveness in marriage is an instance in point at one end of the social ladder; and the
degeneracy of some almost savage tribes in the wilds of Connemara point the same moral
at the other end of it."
By hereditary disease is not meant that disease is then and there actually present:
there is simply the tendency of some part or parts of the body to take up a particular ailment,
and which will most probably happen, unless measures be put in operation to prevent
such result. And here is made manifest the benefit which may be derived from sanitary
knowledge, by which we may be enabled to strengthen that which is weak for good, and
crush down or stamp out that which is strong for evil. This may be done by the selection
of suitable occupations, by the choice of healthy residences, by well selected marriages and
by the strict observance of hygienic rules. I will select scrofula, a disease well known
from its prevalence and fatality, to illustrate the consequences that follow from neglect of
these duties. I must first tell you that scrofula and consumption are in all essentials one
and the same disease, and that they betoken a serious deterioration and degradation of the
system of those affected. Scrofula which proves fatal to child and adult, destroyed in this
country in the year 1870, to the extant of 2,935 pet-sous: to tabes, a disease of childhood were
attributed 4,762 deaths; to water in the head, another disease peculiar to children 7,483
and to consumption, which kills old and young alike 52,290. So that, from this one disease
under different forms, 71,285 persons have died. We are greatly alarmed when we hear
of cholera and its ravages, but in this case, we utter no exclamation of surprise or horror,
but pursue calmly and apathetically the same fatal course, acting as heretofore did
our ancestors with reference to plague and pestilence, of which Sydenham said, they
were as regular as the return of swallows in spring. The swallows still return to announce
the advent of that season, but where are the plagues and pestilences ? Not one death of
this mighty host need have happened. Over their cause we have perfect control. We can
augment, diminish or extinguish. Such a terrible punishment marks out the gravity of our
disobedience. Think of the sufferings, the watchings, the heart-agony, the weary hours,
involved in these thousands of untimely deaths. But do thinking can scale, no emotion
repeat, no plummet sound their height, and depth, and extent. To prevent so monstrous
an holocaust we should deem no labour too severe, no sacrifice too great; and yet neither
labour nor sacrifice are needed, all that is needed is simple obedience to the laws of health
and reason.
Herbert Spsncer, the foremost Psychologist of the day, speaking of the ailing offspring
of ailing parents, says, that their preservation instead of diminishing suffering eventually
increased it, and that it favoured the multiplication of those worst fitted for existence.